The Multiple Waves of the African Academic Diaspora’s Engagement with African Universities (original) (raw)
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Internationalization of higher education is not new to Africa. It helped in the establishment of several African universities in the continent's post-colonial period. In addition, thousands of African students had the opportunity to study in foreign universities through various exchange programs. However, internationalization has also led to African academics migrating into the diaspora in the West and other parts of the world, leading to the phenomenon of Africa's brain drain. This chapter examined the negative consequences of the brain drain and advocates its reversal by suggesting that African diaspora academics can be mobilized to help expand capacities in African universities and education in totality. It urges African governments and university administrators to provide leadership in this regard, especially by offering sufficient incentives to African diaspora academics to help revitalize and strengthen the continent's education sector.
Contemporary issues in education, 2005
The thesis of this paper is that the African university, like its counterpart in the advanced developed world, has maintained a stubborn resistance to change in spite of external pressures and internal transformations. The university strives to remain protected from external interference from the local community and it is unwilling to break the cultural mystique and behavioral codes built over time since the birth of universities in twelfth century Italy and France. When colonies in the Third World started clamoring for political independence, politicians of the West demonstrated to the world that newly independent countries could sustain development if they adopted Western strategies. Two of the strategies, the "human capital" and "modernization" theories became so attractive that since independence in the late 1950s and 1960s, developing nations have placed much emphasis on education as a vehicle for modernization and socioeconomic development. Because the movement to expand educational opportunities in the developing world was strongly tied to economic development and technocratic visions of societal reconstruction, higher education has remained an area in which most developing countries maintain a strong commitment although it continues to fail to produce the desired results. Changes in political and economic environments do not deter governments from continuing to invest in higher education. There is a belief that such an investment would generate direct benefits to the state in the form of providing the necessary high-level manpower and carrying out development-oriented research. Investment in higher education would also in many ways serve the needs of society by rendering various services and advice to policy-makers. Since the 1980s, however, there has been a new wave of brain drain of African scholars-a new diaspora to the advanced industrialized world. In reality, the artificial environment of the African university helps only to serve the interests of the former colonial powers. It is not my purpose in this paper to challenge the strong commitment to higher education. Rather, it is my intention to analyze how the myths surrounding higher education as a sine qua non for development as embedded in the so-called theories of development hold promise for economic and social development in the third world countries in the twenty-first century, and to examine the effects of the new wave of the brain drain of African scholars to the advanced industrialized world.
The Nigerian Diaspora’s Contributions to the Development of Higher Education
International Journal of African Higher Education, 2021
While engagement with the Nigerian diaspora has focused on attractinginvestment and remittances, recently, attention has also shifted to its contributionto the development of higher education. The descriptive andqualitative study on which this article is based drew on secondary datathat was analysed through content analysis. The findings revealed that acombination of factors motivated Nigerians, including intellectuals, toemigrate, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. This compounded existingproblems in Nigeria’s higher education sector. Since 1999, successive governmentshave engaged the diaspora in national development, includinghigher education. The study found that through the Linkages with Expertsand Academics in the Diaspora Scheme, the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme’s Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals, andthe World Bank assisted Nelson Mandela Institution, known as the AfricanUniversity of Science and Technology, as well as alumni associations inthe diasp...
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A considerable number of African scholars who have migrated to the West have done so due to upheavals in their home country’s economy, poor working conditions, political instability, and a lack of academic freedom and autonomy in their homeland’s higher education systems, many of which are in the process of decolonisation/indigenisation. Drawing on the experiences of four African diaspora scholars – experts in the domains of social sciences and humanities, engineering and education – who visited and collaborated with the Doctoral Programme in Higher Education Studies at the University of the Western Cape’s Institute for Post-School Studies in 2017, this article explores the range of motives for their migration to Western institutions. The article also investigates the importance of the academic diaspora’s contribution to teaching and research in both the West and in Africa, concluding that African diaspora scholars and Africa-based scholars are interdependent when it comes to empowe...
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From the late 1950s, Africans seeking higher education went to a rapidly increasing number of destinations , both within Africa and overseas. Based on multi-sited archival research and memoirs, this article shows how Africans forged and used new routes to gain access to higher education denied to them in their territories of origin, and in this way also shaped scholarship policies across the globe. Focusing on British-ruled territories in East Africa, the article establishes the importance of African intermediaries and independent countries as hubs of mobility. The agency of students and intermediaries , as well as official responses, are examined in three interconnected cases: the clandestine 'Nile route' from East Africa to Egypt and eastern Europe; the 'airlifts' from East Africa to North America; and the 'exodus' of African students from the Eastern bloc to western Europe. Although all of these routes were short-lived, they transformed official scholarship provisions, and significantly shaped the postcolonial period in the countries of origin.
2015
The thesis of this paper is that the African university, like its counterpart in the advanced developed world, has maintained a stubborn resistance to change in spite of external pressures and internal transformations. The university strives to remain protected from external interference from the local community and it is unwilling to break the cultural mystique and behavioral codes built over time since the birth of universities in twelfth century Italy and France. When colonies in the Third World started clamoring for political independence, politicians of the West demonstrated to the world that newly independent countries could sustain development if they adopted Western strategies. Two of the strategies, the “human capital ” and “modernization ” theories became so attractive that since independence in the late 1950s and 1960s, developing nations have placed much emphasis on education as a vehicle for modernization and socio-economic development. Because the movement to expand ed...
Transnational education and African universities
Journal of Higher Education in Africa, 2005
This paper examines the implications for African universities of the trade in educa tional services for higher education under the auspices of the General Agreement of Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This article argues that, insofar as GATS is an evolving process, it is imperative that African and other developing countries participate actively in constructing its legal, con ceptual and operational architecture. It also suggests that African universities might meet the new challenges through a reconfigured Pan-Africanism: by strengthening the regional systems of student and faculty mobility and exchange; by setting up, streamlining and strengthening regional quality assurance and accreditation bodies; by establishing centres of excellence; and by mobilising Africa's academic diasporas, both historic and contemporary, many of which are found in the North in some of the world's greatest universities. Résumé Cette contribution se penche sur les implications pour les universités africaines, du commerce des services de l'enseignement supérieur, sous les auspices de l'Accord Général sur le Commerce des Services (GATS), à l'initiative de l'Organisation Mondiale du Commerce (OMC). Cet article soutient que dans la mesure où le GATS constitue un processus évolutif, il est impératif que les pays africains et les autres pays en développement participent activement à la construction du cadre légal, conceptuel et opérationnel de cet accord. Il suggère également que les universités africaines puissent faire face aux nouveaux défis qui se posent, à travers une reconfiguration du panafricanisme, en renforçant le système régional d'étudiants, ainsi que le principe de mobilité et d'échanges concernant les facultés ; mais